RADIATOR NOT HEATING

[ajs123]

I have 2 tower radiators in the living room, 1 is boiling, the other rarely gets luke warm. I have drained it and refilled it, bled the whole system, yet it still fails to heat. The inlet pipe us really hot, yet the return pipe is cool. I have turned all rads off in house, including both valves, to try and force the water through and that does help a little as the rad gets hot, but as soon as I open up the rest of the rads the tower 1 goes back to being useless. Any advice greatly appreciated as the missus wants the xmas tree in the living room so will have to turn the hot 1 off!! Thank you

 

[D_Hailsham]

If you turned both valve off on all radiators, the system will no longer be balanced - if it was already balanced - so you wil have to rebalance the system. This ensures that each rad gets its fair share of the heat being circulated.

 

[ianmcd]

Some tower rads have a baffle fitted and can only be installed one way round, the two pipes from the rad are flow and return, the flow is the hottest,if both rads are the same make, feel the one that is working and find out which side is the flow, then feel the other and see if the flow and return are the same way round

 

[denso13]

1 is boiling, the other rarely gets luke warm

Have they always been like this?

 

[kidgreen61]

As IanmcD says, probably piped wrongly.

Quite often, you can just take them off, turn them around, job done.

 

[ajs123]

Thank you. I will try and balance them, they have been like this since I moved in. The rad has a sticker reading inlet on the left hand side, which is also the side where the hottest pipe is, so can I assume it's fitted correctly? Thank you for taking the time to help.

 

[D_Hailsham]

Thank you. I will try and balance them

Here's how to do it:

1. Remove all TRV heads and open any wheel valves
2. Set all lockshield valves to 1/3rd turn open
3. Turn heating on and wait for everything to warm up.
4. The flow pipe temperature of all rads should be about the same so you need to concentrate on the return temperatures
5. Adjust the LS valves until all return temperatures are the same.
6. Close the LS valve to reduce the return temp; open LS valve to increase return temp.
7. Only adjust one rad at a time and wait five minutes for the change to take effect
8. Small changes can have a large effect so open/close the LS valve by 1/12th turn at a time
Edit
9. Altering one rad will affect others. So you may need to go round several times

 

[ajs123]

Thank you, task for weekend!!

 

[D_Hailsham]

Thank you, task for weekend!!

I've added an extra instruction.